The use of inflatable occupant restraints, or airbags, in automotive vehicles has become common in the automotive industry. Most new vehicles are configured with inflatable occupant restraint systems which respond to frontal impacts. In order to enhance the energy absorbing capability of their products, the automotive industry has turned its attention to developing energy absorbing restraints responsive to excessive loading laterally of a vehicle.
One of the areas of the vehicle under consideration for use of inflatable occupant restraints to decrease lateral loading is the interior side of the vehicle, for example, the area between the upper portion of an occupant and the vehicle side glass. Japanese Patent Application 3-276844 to Mazda Motor Corporation is exemplary of one approach to providing airbags in the space adjacent the upper portion of a vehicle occupant in the front seat of a vehicle. Another approach for a roof side rail mounted side inflatable restraint system is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,540,459 (Daniel), assigned to the assignee of the present invention, which is adequate for that portion of the interior vehicle side between the A and B pillars. It has become desirable, however, to extend the side air bag system across pillars to form a curtain along a substantial portion of the vehicle side interior to provide a restraint for most, or all, occupants in the vehicle seats adjacent a side. A system is thus needed which can deploy from a roof longitudinally along a side of the vehicle to cover pillar sections, windows and other side interior sections of a vehicle. One design attempting to provide such a system, U.S. Pat. No. 5,788,270 (Haland), employs an airbag mounted in a recess in the door frame, but does not address packaging of such a system with respect to a roof headliner or pillar trim.